overgraze
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Etymology
Origin of overgraze
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The trick, Dobson said, is making sure that the cows don’t overgraze, which could deplete the soil and release greenhouse gases stored within it.
From Salon ● May 10, 2019
“If you overgraze, this landscape is quick to be unforgiving, and you’re going to be out of business,” he said.
From Washington Times ● May 15, 2017
“They tend to overgraze the vegetation around water sources,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2015
"You could overgraze an arid land and convert it permanently to desert—that's a local threshold," Kareiva explains.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 7, 2013
Hardin’s idea explains why public bathrooms are so gross, why people litter, and, according to his original example, why farmers will let their cows overgraze communal fields.
From BusinessWeek ● Jul. 26, 2012
Finally, four days after Bamberger took his company public, in 1969, he bought the land of his dreams: 3,000 horribly overgrazed and eroded acres of derelict ranchland in Johnson City, Texas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
Cattle rancher Brian Sprenger never saw sharp-tailed grouse as a kid, when much of the rangeland near Sidney, Nebraska, was overgrazed or farmed.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 25, 2023
"If an auroch or mammoth overgrazed, then the plant alkaloids would make it not feel very well," he says.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2023
“The fire would not have burned so hot had it not been overgrazed and didn’t have an increased fuel load,” Kaiser said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2020
It was overgrazed; rain eroded big arroyos in the gray clay, and the salt bush took hold.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
According to a 2019 study by the Nairobi-based African Forest Forum, Sudan had already lost nearly half of its forested land since 1960 due to agricultural expansion, firewood collection and overgrazing.
From Barron's ● Feb. 19, 2026
So, in 1934, as Depression-era dust storms darkened the skies over the Great Plains, worsened by overgrazing that denuded grasslands, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for the lawmaker.
From Salon ● Dec. 4, 2025
African wildlife was also affected, with hippos in Botswana stranded in dry riverbeds, and elephants culled in Zimbabwe and Namibia to feed hungry communities and prevent overgrazing.
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2025
While overgrazing is not yet a widespread occurrence across the Western Atlantic, it already occurs in subtropical to temperate waters around Australia and in the Mediterranean.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 6, 2024
But on the black land twenty minutes down the road, the soil has been decimated by years of overfarming and overgrazing.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
